Butterfly Mask
by Lady Evenstar
Summary: Post RotK, Legolas broods over his kingship and longs for the sea...until a certain someone helps him come to terms, upon a midearthen beach. Angst. Fluff. Yaoi.


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BUTTERFLY MASK

All belongs to *him*

Warning: This story contains A/L. I tried to resist, but the slash daemon in my head wouldn't leave me alone! Thus I have betrayed my penname, and there is naught to do but sit back and enjoy the irony of the situation. So break out some Keebler E.L.Fudge cookies, and let us continue…

{/}

Post-RoTK, Legolas has established his Kingdom. A one-shot, this writing gives you only a snapshot of a moment in the LoTR universe.

{/}

The sand shifted through his fingers, made rainbows of light as he released the granules to the wind, to be carried away to the Undying Lands.

The waves rhythmically pounded the shore, colored cerulean and green and blue with his sorrow.

His hair was unkempt and gold against the sunlight and now it melted to his hips.

It seemed that only yesterday it was cut short in warriors' braids.

__

That was then. This is now.

But what is *now*? _I would that I was a grain of sand, to be swept away in the blink of an eye. I would that I was a grain of sand, to become one with the salt of the sea._

The forest wept behind him. Its Lord had abandoned it. He was lost to the allure of the sea, like so many of those before him. He had been lost since the final battle.

But sobs do not contend with roars, and the growl of the ocean was all that filled Legolas's ears, besotted his vision, his touch, his smell.

He tilted his head back, wind whipping his hair about his face. The sun burned his eyes.

He took a deep breath, released it, and with it fell way the mask he adopted now around the humans. Like to the Lady of Light, Galadriel, he glowed, with age and power and beauty, now the epitome of what it was to be elven kind. The most powerful of his people left. But he must keep that hidden, he mustn't let them glimpse the light inside.

Galadriel was gone. Celeborn was gone. Elrond was gone. Thranduil was gone. In a white ship over the sea.

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What am I, to possess this light? Neither powerful nor wise, as they were. I am a warrior. It should stain my light with crimson.

He had always kept the light hidden, when he traveled with the fellowship. He was not deserving of it. He had measured himself with them and found himself lacking.

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I am not even a warrior.

I am not a King.

I am an elf fallen.

My people are lost.

The wounds had not killed him. The grief would.

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Where is that ship that would bear me across the sea?

His stood, slowly, entranced except for the sharp bite of hurt in his abdomen.

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Let me become one with you now, just for a while. Just a little while.

He stripped off his clothes. He knew not if anyone was watching. He cared not.

White, white skin, marred with sword bite, black scab. The sand stung his flesh and hissed across the beach like a snake.

He moved with slow, measured pace, over the sand, into the sea. First his feet, ankles, waist, till it came shoulder high, tossing restlessly around him. His golden hair floated on top of the blue water, melted together in a shimmering green.

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Just a little while, just like this.

The salt water irritated the wounds. He did not care. He dipped his face in, pulled it out again, felt droplets of the sea caress his cheek and lips and the salty liquid dance across his tongue, as he flicked it out.

He lay back in the tide, floated.

The sky above him yawned wide, threatening to swallow him in its mists.

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If I stay here long enough, might I float away for ever?

"Stay. Stay with me." A deep, baritone voice called to him, from the shore, though it seemed leagues away.

Legolas turned. "I stay only for you. You know this."

The human paused, a sorrowful look in the deep, gray eyes that seemed so out of place as of late.

__

Why are you sad? You have fulfilled your destiny. You have her.

"It looked as if you might leave me. Leave us for the sea, for a moment. Like you would float away for ever." There was a plaintive hint to his voice, sounding almost like he had as a child.

"I might as well, I have no use here anymore." Legolas said bitterly, but he was wading his way towards the shore. The water sucked at his legs.

Aragorn opened his arms, beckoning. "That is not true. We are all worried about you, Legolas. I am worried about you."

The tide pulled. Something still stronger than the tide pulled opposite.

It was done.

Legolas left the sea, dressed. 

There was still an anchor here. He was tethered, and could not float away.

"How did you know I was here?"

"You were muttering of the sea in your fever-sleep, my friend. I came here as soon as I found you were gone."

It was true. His dark, dark hair was pressed under a circlet of silver, his clothes of the court and not of travel.

Aragorn the king, regal and beautiful. Aragorn the King, whom he loved.

"Your people worry for you," he said as Legolas reached him.

Legolas growled. "They should not. What good am I to them? I am no king."

Aragorn peered at him incredulously, expression disapproving. "How can you say that, and yet here you stand before me, glowing like a god?"

Legolas turned his face away, smiled bitterly. "For well over two thousand years I have walked this Middle Earth, meldir, and yet what have I to show for it? I have let an enemy better me. I was unable to protect my people."

Aragorn reached out, brushed a strand of hair from the other's face, forced him to make eye contact. Grey met blue, fused. "Your people," he said, emphasizing the two words seriously, "are well protected. You love them, and *that* is all that matters. You have almost died for them. Battles come and go, some lost, some won, but it is the heart that remains unchanged. It is the heart that matters."

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My heart dies a slow death each day.

Legolas fell to his knees in the sand. The thought remained unvoiced. Instead: "When we set off on the Quest, I believed we were fighting a war to end all wars. But the warfare…it pursues."

Aragorn settled gracefully to the sand beside him, despite his attire. The sand clung treacherously to silk and velvet. It made Legolas think of Strider…back when the man was still his. But no more.

His body heat seared the elf's skin. His eyes focused on the sea and then beyond, as if he were to see the lands far away.

Did the sea call him, too?

Hot hands suddenly tangled in his hair, still sodden and salty with the sea. A warm body, familiar weight, pressed him down, sand shifting around them carelessly. 

His breath caught in his throat, for their faces were nearly touching. Aragorn lay on top of him, one hand supporting his own weight, the other still entwined in the golden seaweed. Legolas's plain clothes wet Aragorn's regalia.

The proximity of Aragorn made it hard to think.

"Across the sea, there is no such strife. That is why it calls you." It was more of a question than a statement.

Aragorn stared deep into the elf's eyes, deceivingly innocent blue, yet shadowed with the weight of ages. They were beginning to fill with tears, round miniature reflections of the nearby ocean. Deep with longing.

"Oh, my elf, forgive me, for I have destroyed you as well," he sighed.

"'Tis not your fault," Legolas gasped through the sobs that had begun to shake him, like a dry leaf upon an autumn breeze.

Humans were quick to feel. Elves were not. And yet, when he was around the man, he could not help but feel. Emotions came a swiftly as breath.

The sea longing filled him, stronger than ever before. He felt as if he would break beneath the weight. He needed something to hold on to.

The elf reached out tentatively, caressing his meleth's cheek, creased with concern. Aragorn seemed to feel the pain that tortured Legolas. He had always understood his mind.

Aragorn caught Legolas's hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing and biting the pad of his thumb, pressing it to his cheek.

"Aragorn," was all Legolas could manage to whisper, before pressing his face into the man's shoulder. His smell was familiar, too.

He wept. Aragorn whispered comforts in the elvish tot, voice gentle and beautiful and musical in his ear.

A promise, unspoken, passed between them. It shimmered delicately between them, the tentative union of two minds.

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I will stay here until you leave me. I will stay, for you, with you, until you die. If there is nothing else true in the world, let it be this.

This that needs not be acknowledged.

The roar of the sea faded away.

They huddled on the beach together until the sun painted the horizon ruby and orange.

A kiss, chaste and tender, fled across Legolas's lips.

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His name is Hope.

"Come. Let us leave. Let us go home," whispered the man lovingly.

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He is Hope.

Aragorn's arms around him, lifting him to his feet, supporting him as they moved away.

The sea was gone.

He felt warm, surrounded, and whole as the setting sun behind them.

He felt…happy.

It did not matter that he was not the elders. Legolas was Legolas, and that was right.

With only a simple gesture, Aragorn had reminded him of this.

He vowed never to hide himself again.

The moon rose in the sky. Elves and men crowded around the two as they arrived in Ithilien.

An elf maiden, dark as the night, charged him, caught her arms about his neck, and held him close.

She told him never to run like that again. She told him he was all that was left to her of her elven family.

Arwen said she loved him.

Aragorn did not need to say it. He pulled the two close to him, settled them in his arms.

Legolas was indeed surrounded by love.

The Undying Lands would not compare.

{/}

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